Another date gone wrong with IKEA

Well, I almost lost it again at IKEA yesterday. I’d made it into the store on a blitzkrieg run to pick up some cheap houseware swag, and I filled one of their yellow bags with a bunch of inexpensive made-by-slaves kutchenkrappen, and then I dodged a bunch of furriners who didn’t know better to get out of my way because I hate shopping I hate shopping I hate shopping I hate shopping I hate shopping and I needed to get from point A to point B, the checkout counter, as soon as possible. So then I got into what appeared to be the shortest line, and then the people in front of me couldn’t get their credit cards to work, which kinda reminded me of the Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara scene in the hotel lobby in Best In Show, except then after 10 minutes or so, I turned around and there was about 20 or so really pissed-off looking people behind us.

Finally, they found a card that worked. So then the checkout guy rushed me through, and I paid, and then the guy behind me pushed his stuff at the checkout clerk to start his transaction as naturally he was in a hurry and time is money and all that, as I looked at my just-purchased pile of swag, then asked the clerk, “Uh, what about a bag?”

“Those are 59 cents,” he said. “Or 64 cents, with tax.”

Reaching in my pocket for some change, I asked him for a bag. “Um, we’re not equipped to do this,” he said wanly.

“You can’t sell me a bag?”

“No. I can’t take cash, and I’ve started on the next transaction, so ….”

“So I’m shit out of luck?”

He looked at me blankly. I nervously stacked the stuff I’d just bought into a shopping cart, and then I wheeled it away, muttering under my breath. I got halfway out the door before the rising pissoff turned me in my tracks. I parked the cart in a quiet corner and found someone in a blue and yellow vest who would interact with me, after several tries with her colleagues.

“Um, I just bought all this stuff,” I told her, “and I’m kind of IKEA-dumb, and I didn’t realize the bag was extra, and by the time I realized I wouldn’t get a bag, the clerk had rushed into the next transaction, and he wouldn’t sell me a bag, and I need a bag for all this stuff ….”

She started turning away from me. I guess I fixed her with the kind of crazed eyeball juju most often seen in people who blow up buildings, because she stopped.

“Look,” I continued, “I’ve got way too much stuff to shlep without a bag, and I’ve got the money, and usually I’m a calm and reasonable man, but now I’m about to blow my stack and start shouting a bunch of profane gibberish, thus embarrassing myself and everyone else here, because I have the 64 cents I need to by a bag for this shit, but nobody at IKEA seems to want to sell me one.”

She sensed my urgency. She calmly asked me to wait for the next available self-serve register, and then I put in 70 cents and got six cents back so I could bag my stuff and leave. Which I did, sheepishly, but glad I didn’t start shouting a bunch of made-up pseudo-Swedish cursing: “Ya, I am getting so fersnutenshlaking fnorft about the balshatenslaggut treatment you snugognslurkenblat klakkle are giving me thant I am about to blattenshlakklet fukkenuppenstuppl all over somebody’s assenflut.”

No? I mean, I kinda have a perverse appreciation for the place. Then again, what did the Swedes ever give us except for well-built cars, horrible pop music and false metal, not to mention housewares stores with incomprehensible skandinomenclature for cheaply made products? Norwegian metal is the true metal. These Sverige posenmetallikenfabriken are not even true acolytes of Odin.